MT Desk: India tried everything. It sent offers dressed as “solutions,” formulas crafted in backrooms, promises of positions and privileges. None of it pierced him. When Pervez Musharraf floated his Four Point Formula, dressed in the cloth of pragmatism, Syed Ali Geelani dismissed it outright. He knew well that half-freedoms are no freedoms at all. He did not bow before Delhi, nor did he bend before Islamabad when it sought shortcuts.
Syed Ali Geelani was no man’s client and, without any shred of doubt, no one’s proxy. He was a servant only to Allah, and a soldier of Islam and Azadi. The Indian state plotted repeatedly against his life. They caged him in countless cells. They tried to break his bones, and when that failed, they tried to break his will. But nothing moved him. With Allah’s protection, he remained standing until his last breath. And when he finally departed this world, even his dead body was not spared. It was snatched from his family, buried in the dead of night by the occupiers, and denied the mourning of a nation. That moment alone revealed the fear India carried of this frail, aged man who had no weapon but his voice and his belief.
However, while his life was resistance, our present reality is bitter. We have perhaps become a symbol of decay rather than struggle and resistance. Unlike leaders and members in occupied Kashmir, we sit free, unshackled, unhounded by soldiers and yet we act as if chains are tied to our tongues and hands. We have the liberty to organize, to shout, to mobilize but what we offer looks no more than meetings for show and speeches without fire. It looks more like a politics of survival and not of resistance. What good can people, especially from the other side, expect from us when we present ourselves in a way that gives a negative impression? At a time when India is uprooting the very soul of Kashmir, seizing land, changing demography, silencing every voice, the incompetence on this side is looking more prominent and pronounced than ever. I am sure if Syed Ali Geelani were alive, his words would have thundered against us with the same force he once used against Delhi.
Anyone wearing the mantle of Syed Ali Geelani can never live in direct contradiction to his legacy.
Kashmir is slipping, inch by inch, under the enemy’s iron grip. Every day, new ground is lost. Every day, silence costs us dearly. If we continue on this path of comfort and lip service, history will record not only India’s crimes but our complicity in them.
What is needed now is not another round of hollow statements and another ceremonial gathering under party banners. What is needed is clarity of purpose, courage of heart, and discipline of action. Syed Ali Geelani left us a standard – uncompromising and unafraid. If we fail to rise to that standard, then we do not inherit his struggle. We may be doing everything but resistance! The choice is before us: either awaken and fight back anew, or watch as the occupier India erases, stone by stone, the very name of Kashmir?